His body jolted under the barrage.
Still, his sacrifice bought Sharyn and the others enough time to reach the far door and crash headlong through it. The sights beyond nearly drew her to a stop. The ear-shattering crescendo of house music battered her senses, adding to her confusion. The club had become another world. The fog had solidified into a dense, churning mass, where screaming figures writhed under technicolor lights.
Sharyn struggled to understand.
Naomi gasped out the answer, “Foam party . . .”
Her friend dove into the shoulder-high froth, dragging Tag with her.
Duncan pushed Sharyn into the thick of it, but she squirmed to the side and waved him onward. “Go!”
Archie hung on his arm, the shoulder of his track suit bright with blood.
Sharyn rushed back to the door. There was no way to block it, but earlier, ever paranoid, she had spotted something that might add to the confusion.
She lunged to a fire alarm on the wall and yanked hard. The music immediately cut off, likely a failsafe measure during an emergency. The ratcheting scream of a klaxon took its place, intercut with a loud robotic voice repeating the same warning again and again:Fire, Fire, Fire, Fire...
The door next to her swung open, but she was already moving. She shoved off the wall and spun into the foam. She dropped low, burying herself. Before diving in, she caught a glimpse of Duncan wading through with Archie, their heads barely above the froth. She blindly aimed in their direction, trusting Duncan to stay on Tag and Naomi’s trail.
She gasped and choked on the suds, but she dared not come up for air. As bodies battered into her, she kept her head down and fled toward where she had last spotted Duncan. Still, the spinning house lights and shadowy shapes challenged her sense of direction.
Around her, the tumult of bodies slowly formed a tide flowing in one direction—toward the front doors—as confusion turned into a panicked rout to escape. She let herself be carried with the surge, trusting the others would do the same.
Sharyn shivered as the bubbling dampness soaked through her clothes. She gagged against the soapy taste. As the crowd neared the exit, the foam’s depth lessened. She risked lifting her face, her head crowned by lather. She searched across the mass of people, all packed tightly, bottlenecked at the lone pair of exit doors.
Where are the others?
Then a hand grabbed the collar of her jacket and tugged her backward. She jabbed an elbow, earning a hardooffrom her assailant.
“It’s me,” Duncan coughed in her ear. “This way.”
He drew her to the left, fighting through the tide. In an eddy off to the side, Naomi stood with an arm around Archie. Tag crossed to meet Sharyn, hobbling badly, having lost his cane at some point.
“Police are outside,” Tag wheezed heavily. “Or at least someone pretending to be them.”
Sharyn turned to look. The Lemmy’s front doors faced a small park. The only roads were a crisscrossing of narrow paths meant for bikes or service carts. Two black sedans with flashing lights flanked the exit, parked crookedly on the grass.
A trio of helmeted figures in body armor stood posted beside the bumpers of each vehicle. Flashlights swept the foamy faces of those fleeing the club. Still, it was clear the searchers were being overrun. The enemy had failed to account for a panicked surge of hundreds rushing past them.
Naomi looked on. “We can make a run for it. Hope they miss us in the crush.”
It was risky, but Sharyn knew they couldn’t stay here. Turning, she searched for any helmeted shapes forging through the foam, but she spotted no one. Most likely, the pair had been ordered to continue guarding the employee exit, to keep their suspects from circling back and escaping that way.
Archie offered his own warning. “If we wait much longer, I may bleed to death.”
Tag scowled at this concern. “I checked. You’ll live. Nothing more than a graze. In the meantime, what do we all do?”
“We stay put,” Sharyn said, coming to a decision.
Duncan frowned at this plan.
She pointed past the two parked sedans. Off in the distance, blue lights spun angrily, heading this way, sitting atop far larger vehicles.
“Fire engines,” she said.
After the inferno at the Old Library, the local brigades already had manpower and resources nearby, a portion of which were now speeding toward the club, responding to the alarm.
Fortunately, others also noted the approaching emergency forces.
